Yellowgroove

Hi Reader!!

Well, what a weekend it has been! Probably one of the most successful weekends we have had in deepest, darkest Somerset.

The vast array of amps used to get that tone just right.

We managed to lay down the guitar tracks for Stepping of the Train and Wrong Side of the Tracks, with Mark managing to lay down his on the first take (after a few hours of “Getting his tone right”!), and producing one of the most blistering guitar solo’s yet! All amps and speaker cabs were lined up, ready for Mark and Ben to test every possible variation; including an old, wooden, and defiantly retro ”box” amp (belonging to my brother, Tom), which Mark immediately fell in love with.

Along side this, we added a new intro to Wrong Side of the Tracks, with Mark and Ben producing riffs, tones and effects to transport you back in time. The 1960’s called guys, and they want their psychedelia back!

Finally on Sunday we set out to practice and learn a few covers, but all those thoughts were pushed to the side when the first jam produced a new song, a bit desert inspired, and a whole lotta rock. It’s over six minutes long (a rarity for us!), called “Anything More Than This (Never Could Be)” and we can’t wait for you all to hear it!

Hope to see you all soon!

Jack

Yellowgroove

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A small, old valve amp that we found in Jack's attic! Sounds surprisingly good and is built from 5 pine trees

It Won’t Take Long…

Studio Session three was, in all fairness, a little bit of cheating on our part. For once, the sounds of the album greeted the day and not the night, as we set-up a make-shift home studio at Mark’s with anything we could bodge together some ingenuity and flair.

Once again, Simon somehow managed to jinx the session… a stupid comment that he will be bullied about forever- “I wouldn’t worry, I reckon we’ll get the acoustic tracks done in four hours”. The question is when will he learn? Probably never. Ben kept him in line, just, in the hope that we could catch up on a bit of sleep, the Zombie look just wasn’t working for us.

Things went a little slower than anticipated, mainly due to the fact that we were all ill. It was like Mark’s room had been turned into a petridish of disease; you could feel the bacteria gliding around happily like ants in space.

However hard it was, this session has given us a glimpse of the body of our album, and she’s looking shapely so far. We’re looking forward to the next session, we’ve actually missed “The ol’ Mill” a little.

Stay well,

Yellowgroove

Bass! How low can you go?

Just thought we’d drop by to say hello incase you forgot about us while we were huddled up in the studio.

So another long night recording… but preperation was key as the stack of takeaway Pizza’s will tell you. The recordings are going very well, coming hard and fast.

For those who don’t know, we’ve been booking up overnight sessions, from 9pm – 6am. The results are great, although all of us stuck in the same room while the rest of the western hemisphere sleeps is a totally surreal experience.As soon as you leave the noise inside the studio room for the eerie silence of the Mill, things can get a little sketchy; especially in the early hours when caffeine levels are running at an all time high. This has taught us all three things -

1. Caffeine turns Simon crazy
2. An entire evening/morning of Ben’s bass licks causes damage to internal organs
3. Although we all really enjoying the recording process and are excited as we see the tracks developing, we really miss gigging.

Throughout the session caffeine and alcohol woke us up and sent us to sleep in equal measures, and I think it is safe to say we never want to see another pizza again.

We left the studio at 5.30am this time, bedraggled and burnt out, but enthused by our progress.

See you at a gig sometime soon,

Yellowgroove.

I hear the sound of drums in a melody!

So it begins… the long road to our debut album, not only are we doing it all ourselves we are recording almost all of it in jam packed over night studio sessions.

Setting up for Session 1

The location of all this noise is an old Industrial mill in dark depths of Hampshire. All tucked away in this rather cold and eerie place lies Tracks Studio, it is all set to be our weekend home in the coming weeks and months. The album will be recorded in feverish overnight Saturday sessions, each one starting at 9pm and ending in the early hours of the morning.

However, the sound of drums nearly never began, it was only due to the heroic efforts of Dan Davies (an old friend of Ben’s) stepping in at the last that we found the drums for our melodies.

The first session has set a precedent, this isn’t going be easy, leaving the studio at 6am, exhausted and beaten blue like the skins on Dan’s drum kit. Through all our hard work camera’s flashed to the sounds of insanity, catching some cracking/telling photos, thanks Jason.

To conincide with our studio blog we will be recording a video blog to let you in on our fun. This was all recorded at the ungodly hour of 3am, and there was a magic moment when Mark seemed so confused by the fact we were still there at 4am that he wrote it on his arm to remind himself.

A vital and exciting session, but thoroughly exhausting. We can take solace that this was surely the longest one.

Yellowgroove